LOW-TEMPERATURE CURRENT IMAGING TUNNELING SPECTROSCOPY ON WET CHEMICALLY ETCHED QUANTUM WIRES

In this letter, low temperature current imaging tunneling spectroscopy studies on wet chemically etched quantum wires are reported. On the w ires, symmetric current voltage curves are observed. Between the wires , however, significant current is only observed for negative sample bi as. Through this behavior, topographic and current imaging profiles of quantum wires are obtained. In liquid helium, the current profiles of the wires are clearly smaller than the topographic profiles, which is used to determined the edge depletion width directly. (C) 1996 Americ an Institute of Physics.